The cities of Baltimore, New York and Chicago continue to demonstrate the effectiveness of city-owned video camera networks as they relate to crime reduction, effective law enforcement, and increased officer safety. It is worth noting, however, that publicly owned video camera networks are by and large unregulated. Amidst the positive results, however, an important question has surfaced: When does public video surveillance cross the line from an efficient law enforcement tool to an illegal infringement of an individual’s reasonable expectation of privacy?

Three recent court decisions establish the limits that law enforcement needs to bear in mind when targeting video cameras, using GPS systems and “pinging” cellphones. In United States v. Jones, 132 S. Ct. 945 (2012), the U.S. Supreme Court decided that tracking a car with a GPS for 28 days violated an individual’s reasonable expectation of privacy. The opinion broke new ground by deciding that publicly disclosed information by an individual (like the location of a car) is subject to Fourth Amendment protection. As Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in her concurrence, “I would ask whether people reasonably expect that their movements will be recorded and aggregated in a manner that enables the government to ascertain, more or less at will, their political and religious beliefs, sexual habits, and so on.” The prolonged monitoring by a GPS, like the prolonged targeting of video surveillance cameras, creates a complete picture of the private life of an individual. As Justice Samuel Alito wrote in his concurring opinion, “We need not identity with precision the point at which the tracking of this vehicle became a search, for the line was surely crossed before the four-week mark.”

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